Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)

April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

 
 
We Are Not Alone:
Strategic Coalition Building Across
(Contested) Spaces Serving Basic Writers

 
 

Overview 
Access to higher education has rarely been more important or more contested. In fact, colleges and universities across
the nation find themselves no less vulnerable in this fight for dwindling resources than the struggling masses knocking
at their doors. In many cases, BW programs are the first to go (Soliday 2002, 2004: Greene & McAlexander 2008; Otte
& Mlynarczyk 2010; Bernstein 2011). Long committed to serving writers otherwise denied admittance, such programs
draw their very existence from increasingly contested spaces.

We are not alone. In fact BW's very survival may depend on an ability to recognize and build strategic coalitions across
the same programs and services with which a great many of us now compete--student support services; TRIO, adult
literacy and ESL programs; and others across institutions and communities. These services often identify with core
objectives shared by BW programs, including:
• serving the literacy needs of first-generation, minority and other underrepresented students and making campus
environments more welcoming and supportive to those students;
• offering individual and small-group support designed to improve retention and graduation rates;
• offering instruction that both recognizes students' existing strengths and promotes intellectual and literate
growth, helping students to meet linguistic "standards" while cultivating linguistic and literate diversity.

This workshop will explore "all our relations." When establishing responses to what appears to be the systematic
dismantling of basic writing programs across the nation, how can we build strategic coalitions with those we already
think of as "our relations" and, perhaps, those we might currently think of as "beautiful enemies"?

CBW 2011 will be a working conference. Expert panelists will prompt participant conversation toward specific
recommendations for the future of the Council on Basic Writing, specifically in response to BW's increasing
vulnerability. Featured Speakers and "All Our Relations" Panels (presentations drawn from an open CFP, available at
CBW website) will alternate with interactive roundtable discussions.

"All Our Relations" Panels will include work studying the building of strategic coalitions around BW, including those
not currently associated with BW: WPAs; adult literacy and ELL educators; WAC programs; international and adult-
oriented college degree programs; policy-makers and activists.

Interactive roundtable discussions will be designed to move the Council on Basic Writing toward greater focus on
serving its current constituents as well as broadening those constituencies and helping those constituents cross
institutional, communal and theoretical boundaries. Roundtables may explore: As a field, what are BW's core values
and objectives? How can we work with others who may not share all or even some of our core values, and what might
all partners involved gain from strategic coalition building? What resources might these coalitions productively target
together, and how? What can we do in coalition with under-served communities to improve and sustain access to BW
for those who have lost it, especially communities that have lost the most? In what ways can the conversations and
innovations of our field engage stakeholders in higher education reform (from taxpayers to legislatures to foundations to
the Department of Education)?

In other words, as we’ve learned in so many recent events across the globe, we are not alone. It is our hope that CBW
2011 will help us emerge together even stronger in our collective responses to these troubling times and contested
spaces—for us, for our programs, for our profession, and—above all—for our students.
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

Schedule
I 9:00 Featured Presentations (Setting the Stage) Mary Soliday, SFSU, Rebecca Mlynarczyk, CUNY
II 9:45 Panelists and Discussion Melissa Ianetta and Joseph Turner, U of Delaware
Wendy Olson, Washington State University
Rachel Rigolino and Penny Freel, SUNY New Paltz
III 11:00 Workshop (Mission Statement) Steve Lamos, University of Colorado-Boulder
IV 1:00 Panelists and Discussion Lizbeth A. Bryant and Miranda Morley, Purdue U-C
Michael D. Hill, Henry Ford CC
Jessica Schryer, University of Dubuque
V 2:00 Featured Presentation (The Local Matters) Kelly Ritter, U of North Carolina-Greensboro
VI 3:00 Roundtable Discussions (Recommendations) Discussion leaders from above and CBW EB
VII 4:30 Group Discussion (CBW Recommendations) Shannon Carter, A&M-C, and Liz Clark, CUNY

I. Featured Presentation on the History of Basic Writing (Mary Soliday)

The first Featured Presentation will outline the history of BW, especially as it played itself out at one of the most
famous BW programs in the country.

Mary Soliday is a professor of English and the director of Writing across the Curriculum and in the Disciplines at San
Francisco State University. She is author of Politics of Remediation: Institutional and Student Needs in Higher
Education, which won the 2004 Outstanding Book Award.

Featured Presentation on the Future of Basic Writing (Rebecca Mlynarczyk)

In the second Featured Presentation, Rebecca Mlynarczyk will continue setting the stage for our conversations about
BW by exploring BW’s present and (possible) future.

Abstract: BW professionals are once again being asked to do more The morning presentations offer us a
with less. Many BW programs have been shut down or forced into robust examination of the workshop
community colleges at the same time that colleges are flooded with theme from various historical, activist,
unprecedented numbers of "non-traditional students." Data from BW innovative and theoretical perspectives.
students themselves--in this presentation, filmed interviews--starkly
demonstrates the continuing need for BW programs despite Questions to consider:
widespread attacks on by state legislators and university -Studies like Ritter's Before Shaughnessy
administrators. However, by calling attention to some new models and Soliday's The Politics of
for providing more effective BW instruction within the college Remediation remind us BW didn't begin
mainstream, the presentation will suggest what the future of basic with Open Admissions. What can we
writing may be. learn by investigating different origin
stories, perhaps those from which our
Rebecca Mlynarczyk is co-editor of the Journal of Basic Writing own institution's BW programs
and author of, most recently, the book Basic Writing, published in originated?
2010 by Parlor Press. She recently retired as Professor of English at
Kinsborough Community College, though she will continue work Given increasingly scarce resources for
with at City College of New York’s Graduate Center. all Americans, what might BW's future
Mlynarczyk’s presentation will further situate the conversations to be?
come.  

II. Panelists and Discussion1

Panels presentations will be 8-12 minutes each, allowing for interactive discussions concerning the questions emerging
from these real-world, contemporary contexts for BW.

                                                        
1 For the CBW 2011 conference, CBW developed an open CFP requesting submissions on conference theme. We
received many wonderful submissions. The presentations below were reviewed by a representative panel according to
criteria including relevance to conference theme and overall quality.
 
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

“Strategic Collaboration Across Disciplinary and Institutional Cultures: Coalition Building, Strategic
Instruction, and Grantsmanship” (Melissa Ianetta and Joseph Turner, University of Delaware)
Abstract: Please see attached.

“Building Campus Coalitions: A Case Study” (Rachel Rigolino and Penny Freel, SUNY New Paltz)
Abstract: Please see attached

“Basic Writing and Community Colleges: Another Open Admissions Context” (Wendy Olson, Washington State
University)
Drawing from data collected on basic writing programs in the state of Washington, this brief presentation
provides an institutional critique of the ways in which basic writing is being reconfigured in the 21st-century
community college. Please see attached for full description

“Building Campus Coalitions: A Case Study” (Rachel Rigolino and Penny Freel, SUNY New Paltz)
Abstract: Please see attached

III: Workshop: Mission Statement (Steve Lamos)

This session will overview the ways in which CBW must redefine its mission in the current milieu, while not losing
sight of BW's core values, in order to acknowledge the multifaceted work of student support, retention, and diversity
being performed by many contemporary BW programs. Facilitated discussion toward a new CBW mission statement
will follow.

Steve Lamos is Assistant Professor of English and Associate Director of the Program for Writing at the University of
Colorado-Boulder. His forthcoming book, Interests and Opportunities: Race, Racism, and University-Level Writing
Instruction in the Post-Civil Rights Era (University of Pittsburgh Press 2011), examines historical relationships
between race-based educational opportunity programs and basic writing instruction. He has also published related
essays in College Composition and Communication, College English, and the Journal of Basic Writing.

IV. Panelists and Discussion2

“Building Coalitions with Student Support Services” (Lizbeth A. Bryant and Miranda Morley, Purdue University-
Calumet)
Abstract: Lizbeth Bryant and Miranda Morley from Purdue University Calumet, a regional campus, will
describe the coalition they have built with Student Support Services and the Writing Center to support the basic
writing program. They will describe the connections and
Afternoon presentations continue our
how they have developed, lay out the benefits to both the
examination of BW’s complexities, this
consumers and producers of SI, and share plans for the
time including including those that
future development of this coalition. Please see attached for
balance the (realistic) institution-specific
full description.
constraints often place on BW programs
“Basic Writing among the Natives, or How to Change Survive a and classroom practices with serious
Program from the Inside” (Michael D. Hill, Henry Ford CC) attention to the national context.
Questions to consider might include:
Abstract: This presentation will ask how Council on Basic (1) What has already been lost, who has
Writing members might seek to advance the mission of lost it and what can we do to make these
CBW within a departmental atmosphere that is apathetic, if losses visible to our colleagues and the
not hostile, to progressive basic writing values. It will general public? (2) What can we do to
further ask how CBW members should be articulating and improve working conditions and
voicing our values both within departments and on local and opportunities for professional
national stages. Please see attached for full description. development for all BW and especially
contingent faculty?
                                                          
2 For the CBW 2011 conference, CBW developed an open CFP requesting submissions on conference theme. We
received many wonderful submissions. The presentations below were reviewed by a representative panel according to
criteria including relevance to conference theme and overall quality.
 
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

Questions to consider (Hill)

1. How do faculty members protect their pedagogical positions within departmental structures wherein those
positions hold little cache?
2. How might CBW provide support—emotional, material, pedagogical, information—for faculty members
who seek to change their institution’s approaches to basic writing?
3. Does CBW have a mission statement? Should CBW members espouse and practice pedagogy consistent
with a CBW mission?
4. What practices might we use within our departments, colleges, localities, conference, and nation to advance
our collective values?
5. How are pedagogical differences about basic writing pedagogy related to the larger and more current
conflicts about the professionalism and authority of teachers? How might the CBW play a role in mediated
these differences and conflicts?
 
“Empowering Basic Writing Faculty through Strategic Relationship Building” (Jessica Schreyer, University of
Dubuque)
Abstract. This presentation will provide strategies used for implementing and sustaining positive relationships
with contingent faculty to provide them a voice within the English Department and the university. It will cover
ways that contingent faculty were encouraged to empower basic writing students within the classroom and
throughout the university system through the development of a professional development program and
connections to campus services. Please see attached for full description.

V. Featured Presentation: “The Local Matters: Defining ‘Basic’ in Local Contexts” (Kelly Ritter)
In the final Featured Presentation, Kelly Ritter will draw our attention to more local matters concerning BW, suggesting
that, in fact, “the local matters.”

Abstract: This talk will discuss the role of local curricula and learning conditions in the history and development of
basic writing. The speaker will argue for an historical re-examination of "basic" writing as a local, rather than national,
phenomenon.

Kelly Ritter is incoming editor of College English and author of Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and
Harvard, 1920-1960 (Southern Illinois UP, 2009) and, more recently, Who Owns School? Authority, Students, and
Online Discourse (Hampton Press, 2010). Her research interests include the history of composition as a discipline, basic
writing studies, theory and practice of writing programs, and creative writing, and her work has appeared in CCC (2008
and 2005), JAC, Rhetoric Review, College English, and the WPA Journal. Ritter is Associate Professor of English at
University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a member of the Council on Basic Writing Executive Board.

VI. Roundtable Discussions (introduction by Shannon Carter)

In addition to the many other purposes of CBW 2011 you most certainly gleaned from above, a major objective of
today’s activities and conversations is to make CBW as relevant and useful as possible—to you, to your work, and to
BW’s future. Our concrete goals are these: (1) a solid, more relevant CBW mission statement and (2) a set of
concrete recommendations to CBW Executive Board and membership.
 
Roundtable discussion topics may include "Developing Regional CBWs," "Partnering with NADE," "Aggregating
Online Resources for CBW," "Toward a CBW Mission Statement," and others that arise during the day. Each table will
offer specific recommendations for CBW. We have also asked presenters to bring to the table additional, specific
questions worth pursuing.

VII. Group Discussion: Recommendations for CBW (Shannon Carter and Liz Clark)
Reports from Roundtable Discussions (see above) regarding next steps for an increasingly responsive and relevant
CBW, and action plans for CBW Executive Board and membership.
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

Discussion Facilitators3
Shannon Carter Texas A&M-Commerce CBW Co-Chair, 2008-2011
Hannah Ashley West Chester University CBW Co-Chair, 2008-2012*
J. Elizabeth Clark LaGuardia CC-CUNY (incoming) CBW Co-Chair, 2011-2013
Greg Glau Northern Arizona University CBW Executive Board
Susan Bernstein Queens, NY CBW Executive Board
William Lalicker West Chester University CBW Executive Board
Barbara Gleason City College of New York CBW Executive Board, incoming BWe editor
Peter Adams CC of Baltimore County CBW Executive Board
Kathleen A. Baca Dana Ana CC CBW Executive Board
Sugie Goen-Salter San Francisco State Univ CBW Executive Board
Deborah Mutnick Long Island Univ-Brooklyn CBW Executive Board

Full Presentation Descriptions:

“Strategic Collaboration Across Disciplinary and Institutional Cultures: Coalition Building, Strategic
Instruction, and Grantsmanship” (Melissa Ianetta and Joseph Turner, University of Delaware)
Among the questions you pose in this year’s call for the CBW workshop, you ask:
How might CBW help build and sustain productive relations and coalitions across campuses, communities, and
regions—especially as these “relations” share and build upon BW’s core values?

In what ways can the conversations and innovations of our field engage current stakeholders in the higher
education reform movement (such as state legislatures, private foundations, and the Department of Education)?”
This paper uses one example, a successful application to the DOE for an $880,000 Basic Writing curriculum
improvement grant, to frame one response to these questions. By so doing, this presentation works to explore the
relationship between successes in building coalition and in acquiring resources.
To these ends, the presenter takes a two-part approach to strategizing coalition building. In the first section, she
describes how multiple stakeholders from a community college and a flagship research university joined together to
create a successful large grant application. Grant participants necessarily drew from the differing disciplinary and
institutional cultures they represented. Thus, this project has to navigate the frequently occurring divide between
Schools of Education and Writing Programs as well as the disjunction of community colleges and research institutions.
This portion of the paper, then, will describe the possible pitfalls of such work and the strategies that foster successful
collaboration.
The second portion of this paper will describe the product of this coalition. A curriculum based in a strategy-
based instructional pedagogy, draws together the grant participants’ classroom experiences, perceived challenges and
pedagogical goals. This paper thus concludes with a description of the grant’s implementation and the success of the
curriculum it is funding. At the end of this presentation then, audience members will have an improved understanding of
both large grant development and strategy-based pedagogy.

“Building Campus Coalitions: A Case Study” (Rachel Rigolino and Penny Freel, SUNY New Paltz)
Declining state funds, in combination with higher demand by middle class students unwilling to incur private-college
debt, have created what Scott Gelber calls “amoral market forces,” which are currently shaping who we teach and what
we do at state colleges. While external market forces are powerful engines of change, the internal forces that are re-
engineering the State University may prove, in the end, to be even more influential. The Education Trust’s 2010 study
Opportunity Adrift summarizes what scholars such as Katharine C. Lyall and Kathleen R. Sell and James J. Duderstadt
and Farris W. Womack have been saying over the past five years: access to many of our state universities is declining.
And this is happening not only at flagship universities such as UNC, Raleigh and UMASS, Amherst, but also at smaller,
regional colleges such as the one where the presenters teach, SUNY New Paltz.

The presenters will examine the impact of this increasing selectivity upon their campus’ Basic Writing Program (called
the Supplemental Writing Workshop Program) as well as analyze how their program’s intercampus structure has helped
to mitigate potential problems. The program’s design brings together Composition faculty, tutors and Tutoring Center
administrators, as well as administrators from the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). One result is shared costs.
                                                        
3 Additional discussion facilitators drawn from presenters listed above.  
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

For example, a TRIO grant, which the Tutoring Center receives, funds in-class tutors who meet weekly with Basic
Writing students. Other results of this collaboration have included the ability to monitor student progress closely
without increasing faculty workload; the re-design of a potentially detrimental assessment rubric (summer 2009); and
the increased visibility of the program across the campus.

An important aspect of the presentation will be to suggest ways in which WPAs can garner support for their Basic
Writing programs on their campuses, especially during these troubling economic times. Because faculty were careful to
document student success since the SWW Program’s inception in 1996, a quantitative history now exists of retention
rates, student GPAs, and graduation rates. This record—supplemented by research, qualitative evidence, and special
campus-wide events and publications—has formed the basis of several conference papers, publications, and workshops,
which have, in turn, served to attract the attention of the SUNY New Paltz administration. This summer, the president
has approached the Coordinator of the SWW Program about using the program’s success as part of a fundraising appeal
for private scholarship dollars.

Mina Shaughnessy once wrote, “I cannot imagine a group of teachers who have ever had more to say to one another.”
Certainly, this observation is as true today as it was in the late 1970s. In recognition of the need for continuing dialogue,
the presenters will leave time at the end of their presentation for questions and discussion.
(Note: Presenters will be using PowerPoint as well as Animoto video from a student-reading, which students, faculty,
and campus administrators attend each semester.)
Work Cited
Gelber, Scott. “Going Back: The Social Contract of the Public University.” History of Education Quarterly (2007)
47.3: 368-376. Print.
Basic Writing and Community Colleges: Another Open Admissions Context” (Wendy Olson, Washington State
University)
Though most research and scholarship on basic writing highlights programs in four‐year institutions, most basic 
writing instruction occurs in two‐year colleges. In light of this discrepancy, this brief presentation looks to map 
current configurations of basic writing in community colleges.  Drawing from data collected on basic writing 
programs in WA state community colleges, I discuss how the complex relationships among a confluence of 
factors (institutional, political, material) define and shape basic writing in the contemporary two‐year college 
setting. In particular, I’ll speak to the ways in which basic writing pedagogies and programs are being 
reconfigured in the 21st century. 
 
“Building Coalitions with Student Support Services”

Lizbeth A. Bryant, Associate Professor of English and former Director of Writing, Purdue University Calumet
Miranda Morley, Coordinator of English Supplemental Instruction Program, Purdue University Calumet
Overview:
We will examine how the Supplemental Instruction Program (SI) has been adapted and integrated with our BW
program and Writing Center at Purdue Calumet. We will cover 4 areas:
1. Background Info on Purdue University Calumet, the abolition of the BW program, and SI
2. How the WPA connected English 100 with SI and began building this coalition
3. How this coalition has developed and grown to include the writing center
4. Benefits of these coalitions
Background:
Suddenly—our non-credit writing and reading classes that had been in place for over twenty years were cancelled by
the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Four years ago, he decided that “developmental non-credit classes” would
not be taught at PUC; the community college should teach these classes. No one in the English Dept. was warned. The
entrance requirements to the university were not changed, and all of the students going into those non-credit classes
were “dumped” into 104, our first-semester composition course.
Before this decision, PUC was losing 33% of its students in the first and second semester writing classes to
D’s, F’s, and W’s; and putting all of these students in 104 would just decrease the retention. We needed a credit-
bearing course for these students. Liz pulled a credit class, English 100, from the inactive course list and with the
assistance of the dept. chair put this course up for the next semester. Engl 100 is a four credit class with five contact
hours. The other colleges were not happy with this addition of another writing class that would slow down their
students. It is possible for students to get two semesters of a first-semester comp course if they need it. We created a
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

stretch class that we will explain in our presentation. Our dept. chair helped us to get the class through the curriculum
committee and into place.
Through all of this, Liz had been working with Jackie Reason, the director of the Supplemental Instruction
Program. For six years Jackie has been building a university wide program that puts experienced, upper division
students into classes with low retention rates. SIs are recommended by faculty for their writing abilities and their
interest in working with peers. Jackie trains the SIs to work with students and teachers. The SI program is funded
through University resources and not through the colleges. Liz’s dean liked the idea of a support program that cost him
nothing.
Before the 100 class, Liz and Jackie had decided to put SIs into English 104. SIs in 104 followed the
established model for SIs at PUC. The SIs sat in on the 104 class and held workshops and office hours outside of class
for students. Our 104 students didn’t come to see the SIs outside of the class. So Liz approached Jackie about adapting
the traditional model when the 100 classes came into play. Jackie agreed and also gave us a ¼ time graduate assistant
to work with Liz and the SIs. This is the position that Miranda Morley currently holds. Miranda serves as a liaison
between the writing program and Student Support Services. She trains and observes the SIs.
Under the new model, English SIs are more than just observers in the 100 class. They work in the classroom as
a bridge between the instructor and the students, offering peer support. The SIs are responsible for three main tasks:
facilitating in-class group work, offering mini lessons, and their primary task, tutoring writing. The new model has
benefits for both 100 students and SIs. 100 students get the benefit of one-on-one interaction with knowledgeable peers.
SIs reap a myriad of skills that will benefit them in their transition to career.
We have been collecting data that shows a benefit of English 100 and the SI Program to the retention and
grades for our first-year students. Our loss of students to D’s, F’s, and W’s in 104 dropped from 33% to 24% in 100.
We’re currently working on newer data to provide at the conferences.
Not only are our students more successful in the 100 class, we have built a partnership with other facets of the
university. Our presentation will share this story and discuss the facets of building a successful coalition.
“Basic Writing among the Natives, or How to Change Survive a Program from the Inside” (Michael D. Hill,
Henry Ford CC)

The infrastructure at Henry Ford Community College is decidedly old school. As a campus locked between the
University of Michigan Dearborn on one side, a freeway on another, a river behind us, and Ford Motor Company in
front of us, our physical plant is severely limited in its potential for growth and development. As a school, we
steadfastly plod on accomplishing our mission—the education of the community—but we plod along constrained by the
demands of higher education, the city that speeds beside us, the natural forces that sweep around us, and the needs of
our industry. Such diverse, and at times contrary, demands dampen the ambition of our mission and the enthusiasm of
those who would enact it. As an institution, we simply hope to meet some of our local demands, stay afloat, and get
through the day.
This metaphor of our physical plant, then, applies directly to our policies and programs. Nowhere is this
metaphor more clearly evidenced than in our Basic Writing program. Our curriculum, our placement practices, our
tutoring, our faculty, and our divisional rhetoric are all held immobile by both the expectations of and our fears of the
culture around us. While we have a dedicated full time and contingent faculty, most of the practices of our faculty are
steeped in skill and drill and modal writing. Our placement is based on standardized testing of grammar and mechanics.
Our help for students outside the classroom centers mostly on surface level issues. Our full time faculty frequently
voice disdain at the ability of our students to write correctly and worry that our fellow faculty members in other
divisions are finally going to hold us accountable for our students’ writing. And, yet, most suggestions for changing
policy or programs—from a suggestion to change the required textbook list at the committee level to a plan for creating
a writing center at the administrative level—are met with resistance, warning, and rejection. We are, then, as locked
into our program as we are into our campus.
Besides the working metaphor here, the issues detailed above are fairly common, particularly among two-year
college faculty. As a not yet tenured teacher of writing at HFCC, I want to explore how teachers whose pedagogies and
values are in line with the CBW mission can affect change (or not) within a faculty that is resistant to current
Comp/Rhet theory. To do so, I will relate some of the efforts I have made to revise our program both within my own
classroom and division wide and discuss the resistance these efforts have met. Rather than simply focusing on one
instructor’s struggles, though, the point of this presentation will be to detail the divisional and institutional context that
surrounds the program. That is, I want to explore how long-time faculty members and non-Compositionists react to a
new programs and instructors that challenge intrinsic departmental values. I further want to explore how newer faculty
members might build coalitions and partnerships amongst more established faculty to develop progressive learning
opportunities for at risk students. As such, this presentation will be mostly anecdotal and auto-ethnographic as it seeks
Atlanta, Georgia Council on Basic Writing (CBW)
April 6, 2011 CCCC 2011

answers for how CBW members might work within an atmosphere that is apathetic, if not hostile, toward the CBW
mission. Ultimately, then, this presentation hopes to identify what steps are necessary to move the boundaries of a
department that sees its values and programs as locked and inviolable.

Questions
1) How do faculty members protect their pedagogical positions within departmental structures wherein those
positions hold little cache?
2) How might CBW provide support—emotional, material, pedagogical, information—for faculty members who
seek to change their institution’s approaches to basic writing?
3) Does CBW have a mission statement? Should CBW members espouse and practice pedagogy consistent with
a CBW mission?
4) What practices might we use within our departments, colleges, localities, conference, and nation to advance
our collective values?
5) How are pedagogical differences about basic writing pedagogy related to the larger and more current conflicts
about the professionalism and authority of teachers? How might the CBW play a role in mediated these differences and
conflicts?

Work Cited
Gelber, Scott. “Going Back: The Social Contract of the Public University.” History of Education Quarterly (2007)
47.3: 368-376. Print.
“Empowering Basic Writing Faculty through Strategic Relationship Building” (Jessica Schreyer, University of
Dubuque)
This 8‐12 minute presentation will discuss strategies used for implementing and sustaining positive 
relationships with contingent faculty to provide them a voice within the English Department and the university. 
It will also cover ways that contingent faculty were encouraged to empower basic writing students within the 
classroom and throughout the university system through the development of a professional development 
program and connections to campus services. 
Carter (2008) explored how basic writing classrooms are often constrained by demands by 
administration and other faculty to “fix” struggling writers, even though composition scholars understand that 
“real writing instruction is not about repair work” (2008).  This problem has occurred since the inception of 
basic writing programs, usually to the detriment of student success. Because basic writing is often staffed by 
contingent faculty who have fewer resources and little voice on curriculum, this fix‐it mentality may become 
pervasive. However, in an era where universities need to enhance retention of all students, and students have 
more demands to be productive writers, it is crucial that programs and resources are provided for students and 
teachers in basic writing programs to be successful. Therefore, the English Department should have a strategic 
investment in empowering adjunct faculty to teach composition in line with current research.   
This presenter teaches at a small, private, Midwestern university with a large population of at‐risk, minority, and 
first‐generation students who are often placed in the basic writing program. Communication to students about 
what the program could offer them as college students lacked cohesiveness. Further, many faculty have held on 
to the view of composition as repair work. Therefore, the basic writing program needed stronger leadership, an 
improved system to cultivate student success in the program and to retain quality adjunct faculty, and a way to 
train administration and faculty about appropriate pedagogy for a composition program. This necessitated a 
move from skill and drill programs to a more sophisticated and research‐based program. To effectively 
implement this program, it was crucial to help connect contingent faculty with campus resources. Training and 
professional development opportunities were created to help faculty understand the needs of basic writing 
students as they move through the curriculum. They were encouraged to discuss, share, and evaluate 
pedagogical strategies for the basic writing population. One important, and perhaps unique, feature of this 
program was that adjunct professors were often the presenters at the workshops; this helped to validate their 
crucial importance to the program and recognized their own areas of expertise.   
The presenter will discuss the strengths and successes of this approach, as well as needs for 
improvement. Following the presentation, Writing Center and WAC administrators, and leaders of composition 
programs, may be able identify ways that they can enhance their outreach and support of contingent faculty to 
help cultivate student success in basic writing programs. In addition, contingent faculty may be able to identify 
ways that they could connect with campus resources to help improve their own working conditions and to 
enhance student success.